Something that has been on my mind lately as we have been interviewing for interaction designers – there are a lot of designers out there, but not enough thinkers.

This article from Eric Karjaluoto @ smashLab is an exceptional read on what we should be trying to achieve with the title of “designer”.

The point I’m trying to make is that there’s a lot of opportunity for us—as thinkers—to provide great value to our clients. We won’t, however, do this if we continue to hold tightly on to the notion of designers being purely visual practitioners. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: design is about facilitating outcomes, not selecting colors. Selection from Put Down Your Crayons, April 11th, 2011, Eric Karjaluoto

posted by Emmy Southworth on Monday, Apr 18, 2011
tagged with design, hiring thinkers


2 comments

I’m glad the Q&A brought out some of the is this desgin? questions and framing. I was listening to the topics and project descriptions of the lecture thinking to myself how does this relate at all to the desgin training I had in the early 90 s at CMU?! I don’t get it at all seems like a bunch of ethereal mumbo-jumbo. Interestingly, through the Q&A discussion it really started to gel that the process of social innovation desgin or desgining behavior rather than form , it’s not that different from the desgin processes we studies for product desgin . market research or educating yourself on a topic area as a common language or reference framework, ideation of exploring that framework for what is possible, divergent thinking for exploring what are the possibilities of solutions, and convergent thinking of evaluating and putting value to those possibilities Taking it a step further, this desgin approach cycles through the process in iterations once the desgin’ part is done and out in the world. I guess this relates to the point made that Transformation desgin is never completed. Society and behavior as a material is quite a mental stretch, but I guess there’s something to it. It’s hard to argue with the results. That’s what I got from the lecture.

comment by Adam 561 days later

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